The news is big business. Given the historic media mergers planned this summer, you can expect network news to reveal even more bias than before. Contrary to popular belief, network television’s fiction-before-facts approach isn’t nearly as politically motivated as it is the result of internal measures made to reiterate and reward networks’ preexisting profit structure.

Much to the FCC and media rivals’ chagrin, Comcast is poised to merge with NBC Universal in a $30 billion partnership that would marry the world’s largest cable and broadband provider to one of its biggest TV networks. Time Warner unit Warner Brothers Entertainment is currently engaged in talks to acquire British TV production company Shed Media. Cablevision recently acquired cable provider Bresnan for $1.3 billion. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has bought the Skiff e-reader for $11 billion. As our “media merger summer” looms, a reasonable question could be: what will the final content be like?

The current state of corporate news reveals a unique hegemony: finely tuned on the research and development end, the news has been retooled to meet marketing standards like any other consumable product. Meanwhile, its content manages an exponential free fall in quality, embracing a biased editorialization of world events that shoots for visceral impact and proliferates an uninformed, one-sided worldview. The fact is, more people are watching the news than ever, though it’s the last place you can turn to for reliable facts.

Glenn Beck, when not referring to healthcare reform as “reparations for slavery,” when not calling President Obama a “racist” because he won’t meet with BP executives (or a “socialist,” depending on his mood), loves to rile Tea Party constituents by claiming the Obama Administration is planning a shopping spree with our hard-earned tax dollars. In reality, Obama’s 25 separate tax cuts as part of the stimulus package have resulted in an average family of four now paying 4.6 percent of its income in Federal income taxes, the second lowest Federal tax rate in 50 years.

Rush Limbaugh, when not claiming last winter’s snowstorms were a “nail in the coffin” to global warming (apparently he’s a scientist now), says the BP escrow account “shakedown” is “straight out of the Communist Manifesto,” that Obama “looted” BP and even committed an “abject violation of the U.S. Constitution.” Par for the course, Sean Hannity recently claimed that Obama is “cutting troops’ pay” and “cutting back on the military spending now as we speak.” Which is funny, because he isn’t.

Shortly after Scott Brown took Massachusetts’ Senate seat, Keith Oberman baselessly charged him as being an “irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against women.” The sad fact is, it’s simply no longer accurate to claim Fox News is the lone stenographer for party politics. They’re simply doing what all the networks now do: supplying a product that keeps their existing customers happy.

The news has undergone a branding revolution, positioned itself to reiterate the preconceived perceptions of its market segment. Taken to its logical extreme, the news becomes something akin to a Jorge Luis Borges story: it’s a world where everyone has a special channel devoted to them, an informational parroting mechanism where content is catered à la carte to mirror our subjective, myopic worldviews.

A slightly more realistic expectation of this trend is a news environment that simply appeals to our drool-bibbed, fledgling attention spans. In order to take advantage of a coveted market segment and climbing ratings, MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” has been the subject of a noticeable format retooling, from a bona fide news program into an obvious aping of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” Does it bother you that news programs are now remodeling themselves in the vein of a comedy show?

As the news business grows in market share, you can expect its focus to narrow. Besides the fact that networks are using media to disseminate false views that influence their bottom line, besides the fact that it’s morally reprehensible — beside the fact that it isn’t news —these practices have the power to wipe out political adversaries and destroy peoples’ lives, as Fox News proved by repeatedly airing a false, Orwellian montage on ACORN. The name of the game is simple: throw baseless charges out there until something sticks. Repeat a lie enough times and maybe people will think it’s true, at least enough to increase ad revenues. You might just scare someone enough into taking action. Call it party pandering. Call it a tent revival. Call it comedy. News it ain’t.